How They Might Have Met
by S.R Devaste
Summary: Suppose Patrick Jane did go to Highschool, and suppose it was the same one Teresa Lisbon went to. AU. One-shot, on what their first meeting might have been like.


How They Might Have Met

Teresa knows about the new guy. Everyone does. I mean, who transfers to high school their senior year? A guy from the circus apparently. Whatever. She doesn't hear this from anybody in particular as she doesn't have very many friends. Friends take time, and between taking care of her brothers, getting perfect grades, and making enough money to plug in the financial holes her father's apathy punches, Teresa has none of that.

So, she's probably the last one in school to actually see him.

She's sitting at a cafeteria table alone, when a hurricane of people flow between the double doors. At the eye of the whirl of jocks and geeks alike is a boy with goldspun curls and a smile too open to be anything but mischievous. He's standing on top of a cafeteria table as if it's a stage, pointing down at an audience member. But of course Teresa doesn't notice this, because she is busy and doesn't have time for such foolishness, no matter how attractive said foolishness may be at first glance.

"You really think you're psychic?" asks the boy to a girl standing directly below him.

"I have a gift. I know things," responds the girl: Kristina Frye, hair a stark platinum, the same color as her credit card.

The boy rolls his eyes. "Trust me, there's no such thing as psychics."

"Then why is everyone gathered around you?"

Snap. "Magic."The boy's fingers push against each other, and where there was only stale school air there is now a flower, a carnation, to be precise, the kind used for a corsage.

The girl looks at it the way a fish looks like a worm. A worm with a hook in it. "That's only a trick."

"How do you know?" The boy plucks off a few petals from the carnation lazily, but instead of floating to the ground they merely disappear. "Who's to say I'm not really some kind of superhero?"

"Because that's impossible."

Lazy humor is peeled off of the boys lips by acidic annoyance. "Exactly."

"No, it's different." The girl tears her gaze away from the flower and looks the boy in the eye. "I feel the spirits. I talk to them."

He shakes his head slowly, an exaggerated motion intended to play to the crowd. "Isn't that kind of weird, guys?"

A chorus of inaudible mumbles echo back. Teresa knows better than to assume that it's a supportive sound. This could get bad. She closes her trig book.

"I'll prove it." Brow furrowed, Katrina presses two fingers to her forehead. "I'm sensing a deep tragedy about you."

The also brings two fingers to his forehead."Your mother's an alcoholic and you're father's doing the maid, but you don't notice either because you spend every waking moment figuring how to stay on top of the very slippery social pyramid. Recently you've decided to legitimize your social manipulation through pretending to be psychic."

"Excuse me?" caws Kristina.

The boy gives one of his thousand watt smiles so strong Teresa's afraid Kirstina's going to suffer from electrocution. "You may have a spiritual connection, but my way actually works."

"You don't attack her," says a shadow looming behind the blonde girl. Wayne Rigsby.

Teresa slips her book into her tote, stands up, and moves to the fringes of the crowd.

The new kid steps from the cafeteria table in a single, fluid motion. "Wasn't attacking, just proving a point."

Rigsby rolls his shoulders, his joints cracking. "You're being a bastard is what you're doing."

"Thanks, Wayne, but he's not worth it," Kristina says much too loudly, before turning away from the new kid and flouncing back to her usual table closest to the window.

"No problem, Kris." Wayne says, but for a long moment he just stares at the new kid.

The new kid doesn't break his stare, just smiles even brighter.

Cheeky, Teresa thinks. That is probably the best adjective to describe circus boy.

He is the exact opposite of hulking, often painfully sincere Wayne. Wayne who gave a kid a concussion last year for looking at a girl wrong, a girl who wasn't even his girlfriend. Wayne has a tendency to pay his debts in bruises.

Teresa clenches her fist, hoping, hoping.

Thankfully, Wayne turns around, leaving the new guy-cheeky-as Teresa calls him in her head, alone. When Wayne and Kristina leave most of the crowd goes with them until the new kid is alone. What kind of idiot draws the attention of Wayne Rigsby and Kristina Frye on their very first day? They are the kind of people who don't have friends, but enemies and friends that don't know they are enemies. Well, Kristina is like that at least.

Teresa is not like that. She doesn't have enemies or friends, but she watches everyone. She doesn't even really know why, but she knows that when things get bad she's drawn there. Not out of fascination, but more out of a desire to stop whatever disaster may occur. And she knows how to, with a part time job at the rifle range, and a few judo classes when she has time, Teresa can more than handle herself. It's the handling of others that needles at her. The lack of control. The disorder.

It probably has to do with her dead mother.

She never dreams about her. She doesn't dream at all, but sometimes, right before she goes to sleep, when her arms are half paralyzed and her toes are prickly with pins and needles she sees headlights. She tries to press on an imaginary break, but the car just won't stop.

That's what Teresa's trying to do as she hovers, never knowing people but always somehow protecting; she's trying to stop the car.

This time she doesn't have to do anything. She's never had to yet, but she likes to pretend that she can back seat drive the universe. That if she stands here, watching ,clenching her fists that nothing will happen.

But there's a problem with watching people. Sometimes they watch you back.

"Hello."

The boy waves at her, rounding the knee-high labyrinth of cafeteria benches.

Teresa blinks once. This was not supposed to happen.

"Hello," he calls again.

He walks quickly, so soon he's standing next to her. She's glad he doesn't decide to get on a bench again and start reading her life story out to the general public of Sacremento High. But he's also standing just a little too close and that's unnerving as well.

"You're interesting, you know that." He looks at her like she's a cross between a problem and a solution. "You know-"

"You know you're an idiot," she interjects, half because he is, in fact foolish, but half because she doesn't want him to tell her what he thinks of her. Not because she cares what he thinks, but because Teresa has a soft spot for the truth, and she has a feeling that's exactly what he'd tell.

"Why?" His eyebrows flash upwards, but his lips are tainted with the self-satisfaction of asking a question he already knows the answer to.

"Making enemies on your first day?"

"Meh." The boy waves away her concern, but his eyes remain focused on her.

Teresa entertains the expectant silence with crossed arms.

"Don't you want to know why I find you interesting?" He looks a like a little kid eager to show off a new christmas present.

Sighing, Teresa relents, steeling herself. "Shoot."

"You're not friends with anybody, you sit alone, and yet, at the first sign of a possible fight, you pay attention."

Teresa almost laughs, relaxing her shoulders. "That's your big revelation? That I pay attention when there's going to be a fight. Some psychic you are."

"I'm not really a psychic. It's a trick I learned."

"Well," Teresa said, turning and heading back to her lunch table at the other end of the cafeteria, "you might want to practice it some more."

To her surprise, but (surprisingly) not annoyance, the boy follows her, his long graceful strides keeping up easily with the sharp staccato smack of her sneakers against linoleum.

"No."

All too soon Teresa's reached the bench where she was sitting. She was planning on sitting down and getting back to work, and she almost does, but something stops her. Maybe it's because she's afraid he'll sit down too, or maybe it's because she's afraid he won't.

Either way she keeps on walking.

"No what?" She doesn't turn and look at him though, even as she walks straight out of the double doors of the cafeteria.

"That's not my big revelation." A peripheral smile turns the corners of the boy's mouth.

"Oh?" Teresa turns, pivots to look at him

This is a mistake.

He isn't like most highschool boys, like most men even, his eyes are wide, and actually looking, picking up details like an artist picks paints. "My big revelation is that you could sense there might be a fight at all."

An unfamiliar warmth rosies the tips of Teresa's fingertips and she can practically feel strange chemicals release into her blood stream. "So what?"

He shrugs. "So, it's interesting. That's all."

"So you're saying I saw there was a fight before it actually happened, like a psychic?" She smiles checking out of the corner of her eye to see how the joke lands.

He lets out a small, singular laugh. "But a fight never did break out, I wouldn't let it."

"Of course," she says deadpan rolling her eyes, but her smile grows painting her lips with another detail for him to curate. "I suppose you think you're some master manipulator of human behavior."

"That about sums it up."

Before Teresa could reply the bell for passing periods gave a shrill whine. With a practiced twist of her wrist Teresa closed and locked her locker. When she looked up she half-expected the boy to be gone but he he was still there.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're pretty."

"What?" Immediately, Teresa sprung to the defensive. "I don't know what you're-"

"Of course," he grinned, "pretty's not the right word. _Attractive._" He studies her like she's some kind of science experiment.

For being a master manipulator he sure had a warped sense of personal space, Teresa thought. Anyway, he couldn't actually mean that she was that pretty. If he really thought she was _attractive_ he would have been too embarrassed to say it, not so frankly. That's how boys were, Teresa thought.

"I've got to get to class." Teresa pushes past him easily, slinging her book bag over her shoulder. "Nice to meet you," she mumbles to herself, walking away and not really looking back, so she doesn't hear his parting words.

"See you in American Legal Systems, Teresa," he calls, waving above his head her time-table.

The timetable that that had just a minute ago been resting in her pocket.


End file.
